Vatican says gays are undeserving of basic human rights.

[Jon Miller]

As far as sentience goes, I think you agree with loinburger. A fetus is potentially sentient if it can feel, perceive, or be conscious. Therefore brain activity would be the cutoff point for abortion, something which would be a good basis for restricting abortion.

This is what I support rationally.

JM

[giblets]

You're so stuck in your arch-conservative ways that you can't even conceive of a world where human rights are enjoyed by fetuses.

Fetuses can't enjoy things.

[Jon Miller]

This is slightly older, I don't know the university the quotes it, but it is from psychology today which is from a soft discipline but is probably 'respectable' for such a discipline.

http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/tul/psychtoday9809.html

"Behaviorally speaking, there's little difference between a newborn baby and a 32-week-old fetus. A new wave of research suggests that the fetus can feel, dream, even enjoy The Cat in the Hat."

JM

[Jon Miller]

Fetuses can't enjoy things.

It's older, but my recently quoted article says that they can.

"Along with the ability to feel, see, and hear comes the capacity to learn and remember. These activities can be rudimentary, automatic, even biochemical. For example, a fetus, after an initial reaction of alarm, eventually stops responding to a repeated loud noise. The fetus displays the same kind of primitive learning, known as habituation, in response to its mother's voice, Fifer has found.

But the fetus has shown itself capable of far more. In the 1980s, psychology professor Anthony James DeCasper, Ph.D., and colleagues at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, devised a feeding contraption that allows a baby to suck faster to hear one set of sounds through headphones and to suck slower to hear a different set. With this technique, DeCasper discovered that within hours of birth, a baby already prefers its mother's voice to a stranger's, suggesting it must have learned and remembered the voice, albeit not necessarily consciously, from its last months in the womb. More recently, he's found that a newborn prefers a story read to it repeatedly in the womb - in this case, The Cat in the Hat - over a new story introduced soon after birth.

DeCasper and others have uncovered more mental feats. Newborns can not only distinguish their mother from a stranger speaking, but would rather hear Mom's voice, especially the way it sounds filtered through amniotic fluid rather than through air. They're xenophobes, too: they prefer to hear Mom speaking in her native language than to hear her or someone else speaking in a foreign tongue.

By monitoring changes in fetal heart rate, psychologist JeanPierre Lecanuet, Ph.D., and his colleagues in Paris have found that fetuses can even tell strangers' voices apart. They also seem to like certain stories more than others. The fetal heartbeat will slow down when a familiar French fairy tale such as "La Poulette" ("The Chick") or "Le Petit Crapaud" ("The Little Toad"), is read near the mother's belly. When the same reader delivers another unfamiliar story, the fetal heartbeat stays steady.

The fetus is likely responding to the cadence of voices and stories, not their actual words, observes Fifer, but the conclusion is the same: the fetus can listen, learn, and remember at some level, and, as with most babies and children, it likes the comfort and reassurance of the familiar."

JM

[giblets]

Interesting. Well, most abortions occur early in the pregnancy.

[Ming]

Yep... universal rights... for women... a right to choose what they do with their own bodies...

[rah]

Yes, I can accept that there isn't much difference from a fetus the day before it's born and the baby born the next day, but thats much different than the fetus 6 months prior.

[Jon Miller]

Yep... universal rights... for women... a right to choose what they do with their own bodies...

Which includes killing other humans....

JM

[notyoueither]

That is genuinely how it is seen by the vast majority in Europe. AFAIK out of all the first world nations this is only controversial in the US.

It is still controversial in the US (and Canada) because there are few if any limits on abortion.

[Imran Siddiqui]

That is true. IIRC, a number of European countries have bans on abortion in the final trimester.

[Ming]

Which includes killing other humans....

JM

No... but the right to choose whether they are going to be a mother or not and accept all the risks and responsibilities that go with it...
To you it's "murder" to others, it's not. Right or wrong, you are in the minority at the moment... and it's still just an opinion.
It wasn't all that long ago that women had to do what they were told by men... not allowed to vote... not allowed to have much say at all in their lives... and it's still that way in parts of the globe... Women were the first real slaves. And unfortunately, they still are in some countries... Women have rights too. And one of those rights is to choose what they do with their bodies.

Again, if you have a problem with abortion... discuss it with your loved ones and the ones you care about... but ultimately, it should be a CHOICE, not your dictate.

The RIGHT to choose is just that... a choice. It's not pro or anti, it a choice.
Without universal agreement, why should the minority make the choice for everybody.
As it is now, you are allowed to follow your own heart on this matter. And to me, that's a good thing.
I highly doubt there will ever be universal agreement on this heated topic... so I'm glad that women have the right to make their own choice, because anything else is a step backward for them.

[Jon Miller]

Just like it should be a choice to kill a human.

I understand...

Soon maybe everyone will have the right to kill another. To do otherwise would be discrimination.

JM

[dannubis]

Is said human fully dependent on another human body for survival ?

[Jon Miller]

So the first step is killing the very old and the babies... and the mentally ill.

JM

[Felch]

To you it's "murder" to others, it's not. Right or wrong, you are in the minority at the moment... and it's still just an opinion.

He didn't say murder, he said killing. That's not an opinion at all, it's fundamental to the debate. Accept certain facts, like the fact that a fetus is alive, that is it human, that it is a distinct organism, and that abortion is killing it. Until you accept those facts you'll come across as a loon.